In Pensées sans ordre concernant l'amour de
Dieu (Thoughts without order concerning the love of God) there
is a brief Théorie des Sacrements(Theory of
the Sacrements) which Weil sent to Maurice Schumann shortly before
her death in 1943, writing, by way of introduction:

Human nature is arranged in such a way that a desire of the soul that
has not passed through the flesh by means of actions, movements or attitudes
that correspond to it naturally, has no reality in the soul. It only exists
there as a phantom. It does not act on the soul.

On such an arrangement is founded the possibility of a certain self-control
by means of the will, by the natural link between the will and the muscles.

But, while the exercise of will power can, to a limited degree, prevent
the soul from falling into evil, it can not by itself augment the proportion
of good versus evil in the soul.

The good that we do not have in ourselves, we cannot, by whatever effort
we make, procure by ourselves. We can only receive it.

We receive it infallibly, on one condition. That condition is desire.
But not the desire of a partial good.

Only desire directly aimed at pure, perfect, total, absolute good, can
put in the soul a little more good than there was beforehand. When a soul
finds itself in this state of desire, its progress is proportional to
the intensity of desire and time.

Salvation
requires the impossible and therefore supernatural substance for this desire
for Good.

Whenever it is certain that a thing that is indispensable for salvation
is impossible, it is certain that there truly exists a supernatural possibility.

For everything that concerns absolute good and its contact, the proof
by means of perfection (sometimes falsely named ontological argument)
is not only valid, but the only valid proof. This results immediately
from the very notion of good. This proof is to the good what geometric
proof is to necessity.

By means
of a convention established by God between God and men, a piece of bread
signifies Christ's person. Hence, because a convention ratified by God is
infinitely more real than matter, its reality as bread, while remaining,
becomes a mere appearance relative to the infinitely greater reality constituted
by its significance.

In the
things down below, belief produces illusion. It is only with respect to
divine things and at the moment when a soul has its desire and its attention
turned towards God that belief has the virtue of producing reality, and
this by means of desire. Belief producing reality is called faith.

Grace
is at the same time that which is the most exterior and the most interior
to us. Good only comes from outside us, but only the good we contsent to
penetrates us. Consent only becomes real when flesh makes it so with a gesture.

We cannot
transform ourselves; we can only be transformed, but we can only be so transformed
if we wish it. A piece of matter does not have the virtue to transform us.
But if we believe that it has by God's willing, and for this reason we make
it enter into us, we are truly accomplishing an act of welcoming towards
the desired transformation, and because of this it descends upon the soul
from the sky above. This is how the piece of matter had the supposed virtue.

The sacrament
is an arrangement which corresponds in an unreproachable, perfect manner
to the double character of grace's action, at the same time undergone
and consented to, and to the relation of human thought to flesh.

There is a double condition for this virtue of faith in the supernatural
mechanism of the sacrament.

The object of desire must not be anything other than the unique, pur,
perfect, total, absolute good, inconceivable to us. Many put the word
God as a label for a conception that their soul has fabricated or has
been given by their environment. There are many such conceptions, which
more or less resemble the true God, but that the soul can think of without
having the attention actually directed outside
of this world. In this case thought, while occupied by God in appearance,
continues to abide in the world, and faith, according to the law of this
world, is a creator of illusion, not truth.

However this state is not without hope, for the name of God and that
of Christ have by themselves such virtue that they can over time get the
soul out and pull it towards truth.

The second
condition is that faith in a certain identity between the piece of bread
and God has penetrated the entire being to such a degree that it permeates
not the intelligence, which has nothing to do here, but all of the rest
of the soul, imagination, sensitibility, almost flesh itself.

But when the conditions of a veritable sacrament exist and the sacrament
is about to occur, the soul prepares itself.

A part of the soul, which at the time can be imperceptible to consciousness,
aspires to the sacrament: this is the part of truth in the soul; for "he
who makes truth goes to the light".

But the whole mediocre part of the soul finds the sacrament repugnant,
hates it and fears it much more that the flesh of an animal backing away
to flee the death that is setting upon it. For "whoever makes mediocre
things hates the light".

Communion is then a passage through fire, which burns and destroys a
part of the impurities of the soul. The following communion will destroy
another part. The quantity of evil contained in a human soul is finite;
this divine fire is unlimited. Thus at the end of this mechanism, despite
the worse weaknesses, unless there is betrayal and deliberate refusal
of good, or unless death should happen accidentally before the end, the
passage to the state of perfection is infallible.

The more the desire for God is real and therefore the contact with God
through the sacrament, the greater the violence of the revolt of the mediocre
part of the soul; revolt similar to the retraction of living flesh that
one is about to put in a fire. Depending on the case, this revolt has
the color of repulsion, or hate, or fear.

When the soul is in a state where the approach to the sacrament is more
difficult than walking towards death, then the soul is very near to the
threshold where martyrdom is easy.

The imperceptible atom of pure good lodged in the soul by a real movement
of desire towards God is this seed. If it is not torn out by a willful
betrayal, with time there will infallibly come from it branches upon which
will perch the birds of heaven.

Christ
has said "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed
on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts
and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces
grain -- first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.
As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest
has come." (Mark
4:26-29)

Once the soul has crossed a threshold by a real contact with pure good
-- an internal turmoil before the sacrament is perhaps a certain sign
of this -- there is nothing more requested of it but immobile awaiting.

Immobile awaiting, this does not mean the absence of external activity.
External activity, insofar at it is rigorously imposed by human obligations
or by the specific commandments of God, is a part of this immobility of
the soul; to do less or to go further equally upset the attitude of immobile
awaiting.

Just as a truly attentive man has no need to constrain himself to immobility
to provoke attention in himself, but on the contrary, as soon as his thought
applies itself to a problem, he automatically suspends movements that
might interfere, in just that way prescribed actions flow automatically
from a soul in a state of immobile awaiting.

So long as perfection is far, these actions are frequently mixed in with
effort, pain, and fatigue, with the appearance of an internal struggle,
of often serious wavering; but, nevertheless, so long as there has not
been a willful betrayal, there is something irresistible in their accomplishment.

The slave who will be loved is the one who stands immobile by the door,
in a state of waiting up, of awaiting, of attention, of desire, to open
as soon as he hears knocking.

Neither fatigue, nor hunger, nor sollicitations, friendly invitations,
injuries, blows or mockery of his comrades, nor the rumors that may spread
around him, that his master is dead, or is irritated with him and has
resolved to do him harm, nothing will disturb ever so little his awaiting
immobility.

Weil
refers us to the Greek word upomone which connotes patient endurance
in the face of suffering or trial.